Benigno Aquino III

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3. Where Impunity Thrives

A climate of impunity reached a tragic culmination on November 23, 2009, when gunmen ambushed a caravan escorting political candidate Esmael “Toto” Mangudadatu as he prepared to file papers to become a candidate for provincial governor in the Philippines. The attackers slaughtered 58 people, among them 30 journalists and two media workers, the largest toll of journalists murdered in a single act since CPJ began keeping track in 1992.

4. Steps That Work and Those That Don’t

On May 3, 2011, CPJ representatives traveled to Pakistan to raise concerns about the increasing attacks against journalists there and the country’s high rate of impunity. It was a moment of drama: The previous day, American forces had killed Osama bin Laden in nearby Abbottabad. But Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari kept his commitment and met CPJ to discuss the growing number of Pakistani journalists murdered because of their work, and the absence of prosecution against the assailants.

On Tuesday, the Philippines Supreme Court issued a temporary
restraining order stopping the government from enforcing the Cybercrime
Prevention Act of 2012 which President Benigno Aquino III signed into law
last month. The court, in full session, ordered that oral arguments for and
against will start January 15. And it gave the government 10 days to respond to
the many petitioners seeking to declare the law unconstitutional.

In a notoriously litigious country like the Philippines, it's
bewildering that the government coupled a law targeting so-called cybercrimes like
cybersex, child pornography, identity theft, and spamming with the hoary
and over-used concept of libel. And no matter how abusive those crimes may be, it's
an even bigger mystery why the government felt it should suspend its lengthy heritage
of due legal process by giving the Department of Justice power to shut down
websites and monitor all online activities without a warrant.

Some
weeks ago, the body
of Esmail Amil Enog was found. The corpse had been chopped to pieces and then thrown together in a sack.
Enog was a witness in a grisly massacre in November 2009, which took the lives
of 57 people, 32 of them journalists, on a stretch of lonely highway in the
southern Philippine province of Maguindanao. It was the single largest attack
on journalists in the world.